Monthly Archives: January 2016

Two bugs here, kind of in the same vein. The first bug we have found was not quite replicated by us, but it has happened twice now, with the second time being captured on video.

Bug #1:
Summary: The Quarterstaff Q ability Concussive Blow does not consume all the stacks when knocked off a horse entity, causing each successive Q hit to act as a third stack stun — but never consumes the stacks.

Actual Result: When reaching the third stack off Concussive Blow, I was stunned and the 2 stacks from concussive blow never consumed to Buy Albion Online Gold; they eventually fall over time, but each successive Concussive Blow strike stunned me during that duration (but did not refresh the timer either).

Expected Result: After reaching a third stack from Concussive Blow, I’d have expected the 2 stacks I had already to be consumed and the following Concussive Blows to start stacking anew.

Steps to Replicate: Unable to replicate but this has happened at least twice now. We tried to replicate it a few times, but we are unsure as to what factors it would require. All we know is that it appears to happen in regards to riding a horse and being knocked off it while Concussive Blow is stacking. (See video below: when I am removed from my horse and stunned, the debuff “slot” for concussive blow stacks moves from the last to the first, but remains 2 stacks)

Video: Youtube Video here

Quick Sum Up of what we think happens here:
It appears to be an issue with horse entities/objects and transferring debuffs to the parent object (or child object? depending on hierarchy) when the horse is removed. It has only ever happened when on a mount and being removed, but again we cannot fully replicate this. Other factors could include de-sync from server and all that.

If you also notice, at one point I would have been able to blink/cast/move whatever, I try to spam my instant heal on myself or blink to a location. However, this is prevented due to…. bug number two:

Bug #2:
Summary: Being stunned while moving and trying to cast sometimes causes desync from the client/server, preventing casting or using of abilities until you move (resyncing with the server).

Actual Result: When moving and trying to cast heals on myself, when I get stunned, when the stun duration is over I can no longer cast spells; it tries but auto cancels the spell/ability until I move again.

Expected Result: When moving and casting, after I get stunned and the duration is over, I’d expected to continue to be able to cast spells/use abilities without having to move.

Steps to Replicate: Move around and self cast abilities (or on others if you can swing that setting), while someone who can stun (we tested with quarterstaves and hammers) stuns you. Without moving after being stunned, try to cast again with the help of Cheap Albion Online Gold. You shouldn’t be able to until you actually move to re-sync your client with the server.

Have an attractive safe zone experience for newer players (while being aware that we will never compete with themepark games such as World of Warcraft here)
Provide a soft transition for safe zone players to move into PvP, and incentive that transition with the right risk vs reward ratio. See the discussion regarding yellow zones

Ensure that the rewards offered by a zone are based on how risky it is: the best gear and dungeons will only be in the red zones.

We are fully convinced that the above approach is truly a win-win situation for all player types.

For newer or more safety-minded players, it means that they have an easier entry into the game and are not forced into PvP when they do not feel ready

For hardcore players looking for PvP all the time, it means that the game’s population will be large, with enough action happening in the PvP zones.

Something like a training feature was also in my mind for fixing the economy issue.
But, on second thought, creating a feature that let you destroy/study items after crafting for bonus fame does not negate the issue, it will just replace it with another economy impact.

Crafters will create 100 T4 swords. most of them will be normal quality. Just a feww masterpieces, or epics. So those crafters will naturally decide to study the normal ones and sell the higher quality stuff.

Therefore the markets will hold only high quality items wich leads to the problem, that crafters are no longer happy when crafting a masterpiece they can sell for some extra silver, but be very sad when only creating something below.

So masterpieces and above will no longer be something cool and Albion Online Power Leveling, it will become the new standard while everything below is just studying trash.

This could, imho, be avoided by putting the “study” Option at the start of the crafting process, wich will also create a new risk vs. reward aspect. Will i risk to study a maybe legendary item to get more fame or will i stay on the safe side and don´t care about Bonusfame?!

Letting people know what they had crafted if they did not decide to study is maybe a little bit sadistic and may lead to several bite attacks on variouse keyboards though 👿

(So the results maybe hidden because of that)

When crafters start to produce items they will be in a position to check the market first, look at current prices and weighing up if it´s worth to create those items or simply study them for more fame. This will keep another balance to the market because the majority will study if it´s not worth the reward (in silver) when prices raise up again due to higher demand and lower supply, more and more people will again produce items for sale instead of taking the fame.

I can’t stress that enough. 5v5 and 5M, being what the game is mostly balanced around (Hellgate PvE Dungeons coming out, 5v5 GvG, hellgates) means that damage is weighed equally with utility.

Without utility on your weapons, your armor is the only other place you can find it. And any other player with that same armor but a more useful weapon is instantly a better option.

Without AoE, and I know that AoE is broken right now, your putting out very little overall pressure when your only do single target with some free Albion Online Gold, and that single target damage sits behind an 6-8 second ramp up, that youre easily peeled from.

In order for daggers to be anything other than this cheesy E machine every 20 seconds, they need a reliable CC, and some AoE pressure.

Daggers do not need a invisibilty on their Q. Because that would push daggers into Light/Medium category too much. I agree that there need to be an alternative Q, and I agree that it needs to be a 3 stack bleed. But I think it needs to be a AoE 3 stack bleed akin to Hoarfrost/Cleave. This would give daggers some from of AoE without it being a focus of their kit.

I don’t think that daggers need a stun, nor do I think they should get one. I think they need some disruption, and some soft cc option on their W. Drop Dash completely it is worthless.

Make infiltration instant with half the Area of Effect. Give them a Smoke Bomb than silences those who stand in it, giving daggers some synergy/reason to go heavy chest. And give them a Energy Drain akin to the wraith mobs on hit for their 3rd W.

Keep Slit Throat but lower damage by 10-15% and have it not consume Q charges.

We at sandbox interactive are as usual keeping an close watch on the test, several of us are in fact in the game answering questions and playing alongside you!

And one of the more worrisome questions we tend to get is “How do I get silver?” Or “What’s the best way to get silver?”

So in this short guide I intend to answer these questions and hopefully help people transition into the nature of Albion Online.

How do I get silver?

Silver is primarily dropped from humanoid mobs out in the world, when you first leave either Kings or Queens Market you will enter into an area with a lot of Albion Online Silver and tier 2 heretics.

What’s the best way to get silver?

This is an opinion that will differ from person to person, I personally will go into how to make silver from PVE while @Korn wrote some tips on how to make money through the marketplace over at Using the market to make money right now

The biggest difference between how Albion Online and other games differs are that we want to have a real economy, this means we cannot pump the game full with silver or resources and have limited the amount of silver & resources entering the game.

Mobs & Resources works in a way that they will Spawn and their loot will continue to grow the longer they are alive, this means that most mob spawns in highly trafficked areas will be quite bad for maximizing silver income,

This is why we suggest people to spread out and settle either within or close to the PVP enabled area, despite the risk of PVP

The hard facts:
* Travel, freshly spawned mobs have the least amount of silver. Often territories that are percieved as too dangerous to go into have the best rewards.
* Mobs that have been alive for a long time often carry up to 20 times the amount of silver of freshly spawned mobs
* Only wear what you are afford to lose, you should preferably be coming home with more silver then the value of what you left home with.
* Group up! Find a Guild or some other Solo players and group up with Albion Online Power Leveling! Even being only 2 players together helps you take on much harder mobs.
* Look on the world map! Find the closest treasure territories, they are often a good source of silver

Equipment tips:
* Shields add a lot of armor and allows you to taunt the target enemy
* Leather armor got a great heal which will lower your downtime. (Bringing food is also great)* Using the defensive strike will buff your armor (stacks up to 3 times) will increase your survivability* The Ability “Disabling Strike” will help you a lot against mobs that cast spells, interrupting their spells will ease your PVE experience.

Q: Signature (Spam) Ability. 1.5-3s CD(or cast time)
Each Weapon Type (sword, bow, fire staff, hammer, etc) will have their own Q ability which is the same across all tiers. Most have a small special effect or characteristic (slow, poison, armor reduction).
Support weapons have a damage option and a heal/shield option. Bow has a second option on T5

W: Utility Ability. 7-10s CD
Each Weapon Type has their own set of 1-3 options (mostly two – one for more damage/healing, one for more Albion Online Items). These have special effects such as interrupts, slows, shield, fears, damage over time, dashes, knockbacks.

E: Ultimate (Special) Ability 15-30s CD
Each Weapon Type has a similar flavor or effect, but every weapon has their own Ultimate/Special Ability. Typically 2 of the weapons in a particular Type will have similar effects (broadsword gives armor/mr, claymore also gives armor/mr; staves all have knockbacks; spears have a dash and a pull; bows have AoEs).

Weapon Passive
Each Weapon Type has two passives, but only in their two-handed versions (Tx.2 and Tx.3 for most Types). Think “10% chance to gain damage/attackspeed/bleed/slow/castspeed”. Typically one damage boost, one utility boost (attack range or energy or a slow) but it varies.

Identifying Weapons
You’ll be able to instantly see if they have a sword, or a bow, or a certain staff, at which point you will know if they’re going to be Q spamming a slow or damage. You’ll have to remember that certain weapon types have different W abilities for utility, and wait to see if they have it as a damage boost or for Albion Online Silver. You’ll have to remember that certain weapons have high dps, certain weapons have stuns and crowd control. You won’t be able to tell what passive they have without inspecting them. And last, each weapon has a very different model, so you’ll be able to tell what their Ult/Special is going to be.

Naughty naughty… But in all honesty, I’ve done the same thing in ragnarok online in the past. Mostly because the game is such a mindless korean grind and the bots are so easy to setup.

The thing was, in that game it was kinda fun botting, if anyone has ever played Final Fantasy 12, botting on ragnarok online sorta went like that. I essentially made an army of bots and charged across the landscape with the help of Cheap Albion Online Gold, I even have some war music playing in the background as my army of 26 level 1 novices all group up to take on an orc.

In a sense, there are three things that can lead to bot creation, vulnerabilities in the code, availability of account creation, and of course the demand for automation. Essentially if it’s easy to hack, it will be hacked, since there’s always gonna be that power struggle it’s alot easier to become number 1 by cheating.

In terms of availability of account creation, since accounts for this game will be free-to-play that just immediately opens the floodgates for hack attempts. Since in retrospec if you fail and get banned, you just make another account and try again.

Finally the last part is also important, programming hacks and bots take effort, effort that someone else has to put forth. Sometimes they want compensation for their work, whether it’s through legitimate(selling the bot), or illegal (Stealing accounts and information) means. If and when the game becomes popular it will also attract hackers, and when they the demand for automation and potential gamebreaking cheats, they will see how far they can disassemble and how much they can access.

I think it’s important for the dev team behind albion online to prepare accordingly. There will be hackers and cheaters, as such there should be tool’s available to the GM’s that will maintain this game for sniffing out players attempting to use modified clients or 3rd party hacking software.

Furthermore, these tools should be made by the same team that’s creating this game, that means DO NOT RELY ON THIRD PARTY PROTECTION. Alot of really crappy korean MMO’s rely on crappy third party like hackshield and the like to protect their games, these do nothing but harm the consumer, hackers will simply figure out a workaround to bypass the third party and go straight into the source of the game and cause all sorts of problems.

I would even recommend this if it’s not already being done, the dev team should try hacking their own game. Put themselves in the seats of the hackers attempting to break in and discover vulnerabilities that might have been overlooked. Rather than relying on GM’s to ban people using widely known hacks, figure out why the hack’s are working and fix the hole in the system. This should be done sooner rather than later, as when the engine gets to a complex state, fixing these holes will become harder and harder, until eventually fixing would require a complete overhaul.

In other words, rather than curing the symptoms (Banning hack users), kill the disease (Fix the vulnerability).

PvP in this last winter alpha was non-existent. I found this to be very disappointing. However, I am extremely optimistic because I do understand that it was a one month alpha. Not a whole lot can be expected in terms of massive, open-world PvP when players are struggling to get to a point where they are ready for that, and find that the risk is worth it. Therefore, all of the PvP zones were empty. Many of these issues I discuss later with long term feasibility and risk vs reward mechanics.

In a nutshell, the few instances I did find PvP, I found further disappointing to where I just didn’t see any benefit. Most of the PvP battles I got into were just a big rodeo, where everyone kept circling eachother on their mounts while trying to assess if they have the advantage. Nobody wanted to dismount because of the cooldown debuff, which is frankly a stupid mechanic with Albion Online Silver. It was also damn near impossible to dismount someone unless your grouped was properly setup for it and caught someone off-guard. That should be changed also. But trying to chase someone down to jump their bones was pointless. Enough on that, again these are all issues with very simple fixes. Again, I am more focused on the longer term feasibility of PvP.

Softcore vs. Hardcore
This is the section I am sure readers will be most responsive to. I read many reviews and posts about how upset they were about AO becoming too ‘softcore.’

Let me be very clear with you, and I mean this to offend you, you don’t know hardcore PvP until you have come across me, and players like me. You can not hide, there is no place that you will find safe, and as long as you’re logged on, you will be hunted. I will do whatever is necessary to make your life miserable because to me, winning in a sandbox mmo, is making you fail.

So please stop posting about AO being too softcore. It is easy to make such posts until you are the one being oppressed. I will oppress you. I have made thousands of players quit Ultima Online and Darkfall Online, and I will make thousands of players quit AO.

The number one thing I said to my guildmates on a constant basis, is be careful who you makes friends with. 50 percent of the people in this Alpha will not be playing six months after launch. FFA full loot PvP sandbox mmos are simply too much game for most people.

I will not play Albion Online if there are no safe zones to harbor new players or softer styled players. I have been there and done that. All of those titles failed because of players like me. I will be apart of, or create a guild where we do noting but pillage and plunder others. I will buy hordes of gold, I have botted with Albion Online Gold, I have hacked, I have exploited every possible means so that you, who are reading this right now, will fail. Why? Because there is no greater enjoyment than watching you suffer. Do we really want to create another game that has this mentality? No!

@Bercilak made this statement in another post where the player talked about making it easier for him/her to gank others to take their stuff, and boy do I love him for it, “if you want a game where you can gank players at their spawn point, you’re at the wrong place.”

You are at the wrong place. This isn’t for Albion Online and nor should it ever.

I pushed crafting in the AO economy hard this last alpha largely because I wanted to make all of the mistakes now, rather than during release. I also wanted to learn as much as I could so that I could warn new players about what happens with crafting in a sandbox MMO: it becomes pointless. Not to my surprise, this was no more true in AO than any other past MMO I have played. If you are a new player to AO and/or the sandbox mmo genre and are reading this review, stay away from crafting. Getting up to tier three is crucial to self-sufficiency. Beyond that is not worth it.

It is tremendously more cost-effective to buy the gear you need in the AH, than it is to spend time and silver crafting up your Albion Online Items. If you are doing it to make a profit, you are making a grave mistake. Why? Because the larger guilds have dedicated crafters who do nothing but craft, and have an endless supply of resources at their disposal. They will always be able to undercut you. This hurts you in getting back your investment in crafting.

To go from tier three to tier four, you have to accumulate 2,400 fame for each weapon and armor set desired. Each craft generates you between 50 and 80 or so fame, and costs roughly 1,000 silver. To make the math simple, let’s say each craft produces 100 fame. It will cost you 24,000 silver to level that tier, which also takes away your time from farming more silver while, as you sit there and gather resources, then sit there and craft the gear. If you buy gold, you can leverage this substantially (this to be discussed later).

Even more to the point, as AO reaches a 500,000 to one million player base, more and more suppliers will inevitably enter the market. By the end of the alpha, most tier three sets were going for 1,000 silver, and tier 4 sets between 5,000 and 10,000 silver depending on weapons chosen.

I do not find that crafting needs any immediate changes at this time. All of the natural changes based of community needs will occur throughout the game. I very much have appreciated the standpoint and how proactive SI has been regarding this. I am also very much impressed by how many tools are within the AO fundamentals to control these metrics (in terms of controlling silver drops, silver sinks, resources, etc.)

The one element that I feel must be changed is the cluster tax system. No zone anywhere, should have a cluster tax that is less than that of a major city. Why? Because it is completely favors large guild crafters who can craft at cost. Other players simply can not compete with that and therefore all of the silver transactions will be funded towards guild crafters to Buy Albion Online Gold. There is no balance in that at all. Guilds and their members will save silver by not being assessed a user tax. Where players and player cities will inevitably be charged a tax somewhere, between the refining stations and crafting stations they use.

Gold also plays an indirect role in so called swap transactions, depending on the gold/silver exchange rate in the player-driven market. These work as follows:

For certain in-game expenses, we will be introducing a player market driven swap mechanism that will give discounts on silver prices if there is too much Cheap Albion Online Gold in the game. You will get the discount whether you have gold or not.

The mechanism works in the following way:
Assume that the gold/silver rate set by the game is 100 to 1 (last alpha, it was 10 to 1)

Assume that a certain action such as repairing an item would normally cost you 1.000 silver

Now, if the gold/silver rate in the player market is lower than 100, say it is 80, you will actually get a discount on the repair: instead of paying 1.000 silver, you will only pay 800 silver.

In general, the discount on your silver costs is the same as the percentage that the player driven gold/silver rate trades below the reference rate.

If, on the other hand, the gold/silver rate in the player market is higher than 100, then you will still pay 1.000 silver – you will not have to pay more. So, in a nutshell, if there is too much gold in the world, the silver cost for doing certain activities will decrease.
This is how the mechanism will work from a player point of view. What our system will do “in the background” – but only if the gold/silver rate is smaller than 100 – is the following: it will take the silver you paid. It will use that silver to buy gold from the player market. It will take that gold out of the game. If the gold/silver rate is higher than 100, than nothing special will happen, the expense will simply be taken in silver.

From an economic point of view, what this does is the following: if there is too much gold in the game, everybody will benefit as the silver prices for certain activities will come down. On top of that, if there is too much gold in the game such that the gold/silver ratio is higher than 100, it will act as some one wants to Buy Albion Online Gold, which will help our business model. We believe that this creates a really cool win-win-win situation between us as a developer, people who do not mind spending some money on the game and people who want to play entirely for free.